The Witcher - Patch News @ Official Forums

Eriash, one of the community specialists at the official forums, has posted this bit about the next patch in the works for CDProjekt's rpg The Witcher:

CD Projekt and Atari are currently in the process of finalizing Patch 1.2 for The Witcher which is scheduled for release before Christmas. The patch is being designed to improve loading and saving times, as well as to tackle a number of design, gameplay, stability and graphical issues and should significantly improve the overall playing experience.

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Thanks to Dark Savant for spotting this and posting it in our Witcher sub forum. More information.

Loading Times improvement would be welcome.

Yes, I have resorted to chasing neighborhood children with a pitchfork, while waiting on all the loading screens, so at least the kids will be happy.
Wearing a Jason mask and playing the theme from Psycho on my boomba box, adds a certain charm to the whole adventure, imo.

I usually use the loadscreen opportunities to take in nourishment. (Herbal tea goes nicely with alchemy.)
I'll have to try it in costume sometime and chase the dogs around the house...either that or move the elliptical into the computer room and incorporate the game into a more healthy lifestyle.

I upgraded my graphics driver and noticed the loadscreens don't take as long as they used to. I'm only in act 2 but it used to take 10 - 20 seconds to load to go into a house in the temple district now it takes about 5 seconds. Unless it is autosaving, then it takes about 30 - 40 seconds to load. To leave to go back to the temple districts takes about 15 seconds now. It still takes 30 seconds to a minute to load to go to a new area like the swamps or docks. So while we're waiting for the patch try updating your graphics driver, it does help a little.

I hope they address memory issues - I am running under Vista and there appear to be issues, for which M$ have issued a hotfix (which I have installed), but I still get occasional crashes when I load the Trade Quarter - which has a lot of geometry. I have not had this with any under DX9 (?) games so I assume CDProjekt are making some assumptions which are not valid when they grab memory...admittedly I have everything maxed out, but I have worn several mm off my teeth with all the subsequent gnashing! Other than that I love this game - great fun, although I hope I'll get to see a few more locations before the end...Vizima is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Personally I take the load screen times to chase the grandkids. At least I have a few built in ones and don't have to resort to the neighbors kids. Eatting, bathroom breaks, ect all fit in nicely with the game. It is a sneaky thing they did, by letting us take short breaks we end up playing for hours on end. :lol:

I still love this game but the load screens are killing me. They got worse in Act 3. So I'll just take a break from Witcher to play Eschalon till they patch the game. Then play both lol.

The load times are really the worst thing about the game ... and unfortunately are bad enough to mess with the good stuff ...